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Being Free is Hard to Do
ValourX writes "What is more important to you -- the four freedoms of Free Software, or the ability to maximize the value of your computer? It's a question that comes up on Slashdot often, but rarely is it so well argued as it is in this NewsForge article. How important are the FSF's four freedoms to you? What are you willing to sacrifice for those freedoms?" NewsForge and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.
What is more important to you -- the four freedoms of Free Software, or the ability to maximize the value of your computer?
I suppose that depends on how you define "value". Personally, having Free Software and using Free Software has done more to "maximize the value" of my computer far more than anything else I can think of.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Personally, I'm willing to sacrifice the convenience of flash animations, or of photoshop, for a free (as in beer) solution. I'm cheap. The fact that the free (as in beer and in freedom) software often is excellent quality, FreeBSD being my favorite, doesn't hurt either.
However, I can see it being an impediment to adoption of free software because of the sometimes unreasonable demands placed by restrictive licences. The GPL does prevent advances and progress in some cases, such as device drivers, that otherwise would be possible. Same with flash and other non-free media solutions, whether DRM or CSS on DVDs or what have you.
I myself feel however, that sacrificing utility for the benefit of using a free software package, is only rational if the resulting loss in utility is no greater than the benefits. However, it is easy to quantify the benefit of free as in beer software, but harder to economically evalutate the benefits of free as in freedom software.
Honestly, someone once said (+Orc, a very good cracker back in the day) that someone's work that is done for money will always be inferior to the work of someone who does it for love. I personally would rather use the OpenBSD team's ssh than a commercial one, because I know that the people behind it are doing it because they believe in it, and are going to do their best to put out a superior product, rather than being more concerned for the buck, not the software.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
He doesn't even try to actually make a connection between the apparent premise and the apparent conclusion.
Direct quotes:
But he doesn't say WHY anyone with these high-moral ideals should let go of them.
Again, why not? Because it makes him uncomfortable to be asked to make "unfavorable sacrifices"?
False dichotomy. There isn't an either/or except in your premise that you wouldn't have written software were it to be free.
I too write software for a living. People pay me to do it. It's also free software - because it falls below the value line for closed source software for my employer [along with at least 95% of all software written in the company].
I have also written software which has nothing to do with my employer. I do it for the love of it. There are many others in the world with a similar view. I would write software even if I didn't get paid to do it - sure, I'd need another job to keep body and soul together, but I'd still hack.
Anyway, why wouldn't people pay you if it was free software - do you only code for people who sell the software afterwards as proprietary? Most software (95%+) is generated for internal use - so it generally makes sense to release it as free software. Because then it reduces the amount of code the purchaser needs for any new products. The more free code there is generally, the cheaper software production gets in total.
--Ng
A dozen posts & already many that confuse no-cost software with software that you can do anything with, including viewing & modifying the source & sharing it with others.
A love for zero-cost software isn't bad. I see a lot of people coming to the F/OSS movement because of it. They could run a warez copy of Photoshop, but then they discover the GIMP. After a while, they may discover the fantastic quality of software available & may try more of it. They might discover how wonderfully helpful and intelligent the community is--they are eager to help & are eager to have you contribute back.
I probably wouldn't have started to use F/OSS if it was priced unreasonably. But now I find the other parts of freedom to be much more important. It is frustrating to find commercial software that is stagnant. Bugs are always present in any software (some of which are security vulnerabilities, some of which are just annoyances that I have run into). But with F/OSS, I can usually see if a bug has already been reported, look for solutions, or report it & wait for insight from others. I'm not much of a programmer, but I can also sometimes discover a fix myself. The frustration of not being able to have this basic ability with some nonfree software is horrid.
I recently started to contribute a small amount of money each month to software which I use every day--which I depend on for entertainment and to get my work done. Paying for free software?! Well, at least it is tax deductible & it does make me feel good.
I would definitely say that the four freedoms are more important than zero-cost.
You seem to have excluded the set of available answers in the postamble to your questions. A bit like saying "What's the capital of France?" and then saying "Please don't say Paris".
There are many top flight coders who work for companies like IBM, HP, Sun, etc. (eg, Andrew Tridgell, Jeremy Allison, and so on). They all get paid to write F/OSS. But you don't have to be an uber-coder to get into that game. If you work for a reasonable enlightened company [yes, there are a few], they can see that most of the software generated internally has no value as a sales proposition. So get them to release it as free software. Explain that it means that the cost of developing new software will drop, because you can now use and redistribute the work of all the other coders.
Bang - suddenly you're developing OSS for a living. Maybe you do helpdesk other parts of the time, or are a tech support guy. So what? It's still code. The more there is of it, the more it'll get used.
Hell, even the stuff which I've written and been ashamed of is useful - because it let's people know how not to do something!
--Ng
At least as considered by any business who'd want to ingegrate anything, even as miniscule as a c file with 3 functions that calculate CRC.
What's missing is just like "The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public" only the opposite -
"The freedom to improve the program, and not release your improvements to the public" (or sell said improvements to the public for profit)"
This is the issue commonly called copylefting.
What it comes down to is "Free for anyone who's part of our [opensource] club" as set forth by the GPL (If you're a Checkpoint dev, a legal obligation to release all/parts-of the source code of the product makes whatever ran you into that obligation anything but free), or "Free to anyone. Period." as set forth by X11/modified-BSD licenses. The latter offer the fifth freedom.
The obligation [e.g. lack of freedom] to integrate GPL code with [often immense] business-owned closed code serves on one hand to spur [few, IMHO] businesses to go opensource, while keeping a dark "obligation" cloud over Open Source that scares the rest away. I personally ran into this dillema at my former workplace. The result was us using BSD-licensed and commercial solutions, while [to my great dismay] avoiding GPL-code like the plague.
The LGPL is a fair compromise, unfortunately few projects use it. Sometimes you need code from a GPL app, and you're willing to wrap it in a library yourself (and offer that library's code to the public) but since the original dev never considered this and just slapped the GPL on his work, and you can't use it (whereas had he done so with LGPL, you would be able to do so).
The conclusion (which promptly earned me two flamebait mods last time I said this unliked piece of truth here) is that everything GPL is quite unfree to those [nice, evil, fill your own description] people who pay us coders our salaries and feed our families.
I, personally, as a coder who wants to tap open source where I work, would definitely like it to be otherwise. For the GNU codebase to be as legal-obligation-free and accessible as the X11-ilcensed or mod-BSD-licensed codebase (and a big thank you to anyone altruistic enough to use those licenses on his donated code).
Wishful thinking I guess...
-
Look up the following: Mplayer, Kaffeine, Xine, LibDVDRead and BZFlag. Not replacements for closed source, really. Far better, IMO. As for ruddy games, that's what the Cube, PS2, Xbox et al are for (yes, in direct contradiction of me mentioning BZFlag. I can be ignorant, too).
You may also want to look at Mozilla, Firefox, Kmail (which, IMO, is the best graphical mail client ever coded), The GIMP, the FreeBSD networking stack and ipfw. These are all bits of open source software that I use on a daily basis that are "in-my-face" and noticeable. They are also the reason I would be lost without my open source OS, along with the myriad other packages running out of sight and mind that keep my computing and networking ticking over without a hitch. Being free hasn't cost me anything, so I guess I'm not qualified to comment...
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
Having done both, I'd disagree with that "always".
Where I currently work, we have strong, well-understood and well-followed processes that result in higher-quality code - source control, design and code reviews, requirements gathering, etc.
Too often in a project "done for love" these things get ignored (yes - that happens very often when done for money too). That's because (a) setting these things takes time away from the fun part of the project and (b) often the person doing the project for love just doesn't understand the need for it or (as in my case) isn't disciplined enough to do it without a framework in place (both process and social).
There are examples and counter-examples all over the place - I'm just saying don't be blind to the idea that work done for pay can be superior.
What about the 5th Freedom?
....
:)
Free as in $29.95
Seriously though.. I've made a lot of money selling (my) Free Software for $29.95...
I just had the source in CVS. If you were smart enough to checkout via anoncvs and to the build yourself that was fine.
If you needed help and wanted a really nice installer it cost you $29.95...
This let me work on my little project full time which then turned into a company.
We're 7 people now
The goal of the GPL is to make all software free.
The goal of the BSD license is to make all software better.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
People tend to forget what launched Mr. Stallman on this road toward software freedom: he wanted to use a laser printer he had on hand with his word processing program. The software didn't have drivers, and as I recall the printer didn't have documentation, either.
Big trees from little acorns grow.
So far, I've found free alternatives for almost everything I do with my computers at home:
1. Web Browsing? Mozilla/Firefox
2. E-mail? Thunderbird or Evolution
3. Group Calendaring? Mozilla Sunbird + Apache/SSL/WebDAV + iCal
4. Audio CD Archiving? Grip + Ogg Vorbis
5. Advanced Media Player? Xine or MPlayer
6. Audio Streaming of Archived CDs? Icecast + Ices
7. Recording of online streams for archival purposes? ALSA + ALSA Utils + Ogg Vorbis + Any required media player format in Xine or MPlayer
8. Firewall? Linux Kernel + iptables
9. Office Functionality? OpenOffice.org
10. Digital Image Editing? GIMP
11. IM Client? GAIM
12. IM Server? Jabberd
13. File sharing? NFS
14. Sane storage management? LVM
15. File compression? BZip2, GZip, or 7Zip also File Roller if you really need a GUI
16. Digital Photo Management? Gthumb or Nautilus
17. PVR? Mythtv.org
18. Video streaming? VLC (Video LAN Client)
19. X10 Home Automation? Bottlerocket
20. Remote desktop/application serving? VNC 4
21. Remote assistance? x0vncserver or the vnc extension for Xorg
22. VPN/Tunneling? OpenVPN or OpenSSH with TCP port forwarding
23. Web Serving? Apache
24. Mail Serving? Courier
25. Server Based Spam Filtering? ASSP
26. Client Based Spam Filtering? Thunderbird
27. Image Scanning? SANE
28. Audio Editing? Rezound or Audacity
29. Multitrack Audio? Ardour
30. MIDI Sequencing? Rosegarden
31. CD Burning (Data and Audio)? cdrecord + various GUI frontends
32. Simple PC Based Puzzle Games? Too many to list from both the GNOME and KDE projects
33. SpyWare/Malware Prevention Removal? None at this point since I don't use the internet via Windows
If I wanted to do all of this with a Windows based home network do you have any idea how much money I'd have to spend to buy commercial software? Sure it's not as easy to set this stuff up as it is in Windows, but that's the price I pay to get this stuf gratis. On the other hand, setting this stuff up in Linux isn't that hard either if you are determined to do it. I would have to say there are plenty of free alternatives and the list above is just a sampling. The only area where I don't find alternatives is games. But I don't play games that much, so it's not much of a deterrent. And *IF* the U.S. ever does outlaw free software, then I guess I'm headed for a life of crime. Crazy that I would even have to think that, isn't it? After all, it's not illegal to own and use a hammer, saw, wood or nails? Just equate your computer hardware with those tools open source code files with the wood and you will see why the concept of trying to outlaw free software is ridiculous.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I suppose I'm spoilt by FBSD's ports system where stuff generally works out of the "box" immediately. I hear Debian's apt-get does similar, looking after dependencies automatically, although I would be a bit disappointed with Debian's time-to-update.
;-)
You're right, of course. Folks don't want to spend an hour compiling things, and this is where Big Bill and the TC mob have the upper hand. They just want to slam the DVD in the hole and get the latest drivel on the screen and to hell with privacy and control. Me? I like knowing I'm in control. With FOSS, I am. With XP and Media Player who knows who is pushing the damn buttons? Have you ever run a tcpdump on a router supplying a virgin XP SP2 machine with connectivity? It's all subjective.
In a way, FOSS has forced me to learn a bit more about what I'm using. It now takes me ten minutes to install a fully functional Kaffeine using libxine on a FBSD box. When I first tried with gmplayer on Slackware, it took me two days full-on geeky head-in-the-Makefile messing and that's without getting X working in the first place. My family now happily do all the things they once did on Windows on a FreeBSD desktop system, replicated from my own desktop after each upgrade, which is far easier than keeping XP updated. The subjective here is have I lost or gained? Me? I reckon I've gained. Of course, the AMD64 helps with the wall time figure I just quoted
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
Freedom is the ability to do something without the fear of punishment.
For example, my ability to practise Judiasm in the US without fear of persecution typifies "freedom of religion" in the idealistic sense. But a more devout Jew is not necessilary free in a total sense. Employers might not allow days off for Jewish Holidays, or even more important Friday night/Saturdays for the sabbath. Someone may be ridiculed by a co-worker for wearing a kippah. Of course a more devout Jew (which I'm not) could work for a different employer, and only deal with people who accept the way he dresses. (Doesn't this sound familiar... RMS would say you shouldn't work for an employer who makes your write proprietary software.)
The point here is freedom is not something that one person has, but rather is a state of mind between two or more people. If you are accidentially stuck alone on an island, freedom has no meaning. You may not have the *ability* to leave the island, but freedom itself has no context since you are not dealing with other people.
Now taking the island concept further: if you live on an isolated (from the rest of the world) island with friends and family, you could copy / modify / distribute software all you want if its mutually agreed that that's okay. Many people have considered their personal and other friend's/family's computers to be such an island. With the internet though, you are in full contact at all times with people / government / etc. who are set on punishing for such acts.
So keep in mind, you can fight for freedom all you want from a legalistic / systematic / technical / software-based way, but ultimately, freedom is a mutal agreement between people. Whenever someone is out there who is willing to punish you in some extent for what you are doing, you have a noticable reduction in your freedom. Of course, if value your freedom, you then must fight for it.
The obsession to endow software with the concept of freedom is thus misleading. People have freedom, software does not. So GPL-licensed software is *freedom-enabling* software (to a certain extent). Its using copyright law to prevent other people from punishing you.
So as we look towards a revised GPL 3.0, we should really keep in mind separate ideas of "freedom" and "ability". We need the ability to have source code availible in order to modify/understand software many years down the line (even after threat of copyright expires). Just as we need the freedom to create software without the threat of punishment by frivolous software patents.
When looking at the GPL, thus imagine it in two ways:
1) If I isolated, what abilities does the GPL ensure I still have? (access to source code, ability to modify, ability to copy, etc.)
2) As I deal with other people, what punishments am I trying to prevent? (copyright hoops to jump thru, ridiculous licensing restrictions, patent lawsuits)